Late last week, we sat down with Blizzard’s lead encounter designer, Ion Hazzikostas. Aside from having an awesome superhero-style name, Ion also manages the raids, scenarios, and other encounters that make up Mists of Pandaria’s patch 5.3. Read on for all the details of the new scenarios, why Blizzard are cutting the XP required for the final five levels, and how he feels about WoW’s recent drop in subscriber numbers.

If you’ve been playing World of Warcraft‘s surprisingly fun pet battles then you may have been annoyed at what seem to be entirely random inaccurate attacks, which can cause the entire combat to be a wash.

Well, worry no more: patch 5.3 is coming and Blizzard are working on clearing up the system. “Once patch 5.3 is live, you’ll see ‘hit chance’ listed for all abilities, and this value will update if the pet is affected by abilities that increase or reduce the chance to hit,” writes Crithto on Battle.net.

“In addition, we’ve removed the base 5% chance to dodge, and reduced the chance to miss opponents of higher levels from 5% per level to 2% per level. The end result should be that your attacks that should hit, will hit, and there’s greater incentive to get out there and fight higher-level pets for greater experience rewards.”

The same 5.3 patch will also bring big changes to the world of WoW PVP — read about those here.

Source: Battle.net

The Thunder King, patch 5.2 for World of Warcraft has just been released, and brings with it more raid content and more stuff to do than in any previous World of Warcraft patch. We sat down for a chat with Blizzard’s Dave Kosak, lead quest designer on the game, to talk about storytelling, solo scenarios that work for all classes, and how they can keep aggressively pushing out more content while making sure it doesn’t suck at the same time.

Blizzard have released a new trailer for the upcoming patch 5.2, The Thunder King. As well as showing off the key locations you’ll play in the upcoming patch, the video also shows clips from the new ‘Throne of Thunder’ raid, shots of the new world boss Nalak the Storm Lord, and of course, a whole pile of pandas. You can learn more about patch 5.2 by clickin’ right here.

I’ve been playing World of Warcraft on and off since the initial release of the game. Generally I get excited when hearing about details of an upcoming expansion pack — however with the details being released on Mists of Pandaria I wasn’t happy at all. I felt that jumping on the Kung Fu Panda bandwagon and releasing an expansion based on a small part of the lore of the world was a mistake, and it didn’t help that the released intro for the expansion had comedic elements to it. So I had decided this would be the first expansion I wasn’t going to play.

That was until someone decided it would make a good birthday gift.

The next World of Warcraft patch has been given a brief overview in this new trailer from Blizzard, showing off both the dinosaur mounts that you’ll be able to ride and the new environments you can clamber over in your quest for phatter lootz. Blizzard published list of all the things you can expect from 5.2 last week, but if you don’t want to read text then here is a video instead. Enjoy!

Blizzard have release patch 5.1 to their juggernaut World of Warcraft. The new patch, titled ‘Landfall’, ramps up the Horde v. Alliance quest with more daily quests in the Krasarang Wilds, adds two new factions with their own unique rewards, and five new Scenarios — two unique to each faction, and one playable by either.

The Pet Battle System has also been overhauled with much-requested upgrades, including a UI improvement and new rare pets. A new underground, invitation only ‘Brawlers Guild’ (the first rule is that you don’t talk about it) has been established too, providing gladiatorial PVE fights against some of Azeroth’s toughest creatures.

Raid groups are also no longer necessary to enter pre-Pandaria raid dungeons, and the next step in the Mists of Pandaria Black Prince legendary quest line has been opened up. For the full, enormous list of patch notes including class and balance tweaks, hit up Battle.net.

Still not sure on the latest expansion? Click here for our massive review of Pandaria.

Source: Press Release

Reviewing an MMO expansion is sort of like giving a game a physical. It’s an opportunity to look at the new content that the expansion has added to the game (which, for a World of Warcraft expansion, is never a small amount), but also to look at the state of the MMO as a whole. Because, as more and more content is added to the same product, there’s always a risk that a game might lose its direction or momentum, or make older content completely irrelevant. A really good expansion will find a way to not only make advancement fun, but create a new experience for players who want to go back to their roots.

Does Mists of Pandaria pull this off? Nick Kolan comes back from the level cap to give us the final verdict.

Let’s just get this out of the way now: the Pet Battle System introduced in World of Warcraft: Mists of Pandaria is a massive Pokemon ripoff. And that’s totally fine by me. For years, fans of the Pokemon franchise have cried out for a Pokemon MMO. The thought of an open world filled with hundreds of adorable little monsters to find, battle, collect and train is tantalizing at the very least and yet Nintendo has never capitalized on it.

Well, you snooze you lose, Nintendo. Blizzard stepped up to the plate and has mimicked the Pokemon model, or at least the core elements of it, to a tee.

Blizzard may have only just launched, but Blizzard are already hard at work planning what their next patch will achieve. Patch 5.1, which they plan to deploy on the PTR shortly, will increase the tensions between Horde and Alliance as both sides land expeditions on the shores of the islands of Pandaria, bringing new daily quest hubs and faction reputations.

Solo PVE challenges will also be available in the form of the ‘Brawlers Guild’ challenges, against “some of the toughest creatures in World of Warcraft”. The Pet Battles system UI will also undergo significant changes, including a way to “upgrade the rarity of the pets that you’ve captured”.

Finally, Valor Points will be able to be used on upgrading the item level and quality of gear you already own, while sure Wrathion is “additional tasks for players to complete as they continue their quest for Legendary gear”. Get in.

Source: Battle.net

Blizzard have proudly revealed this morning that Mists of Pandaria, the latest expansion in the World of Warcraft franchise, has shipped 2.7 million units in the first week of launch. That number is expected to grow when the figures from the China launch, which occurred on Tuesday, are finally calculated.

As a result, World of Warcraft‘s subscriber base has been pushed back above the 10 million mark — still down from its peak of 12 million in October of 2010, but solid growth from the 9.1 million figure most recently released.

While we work to bring you our final thoughts on the game, Blizzard have announced that they are hard at work on the first major post-launch content update, with more info to come in the weeks ahead.

Source: Press Release

Blizzard continue to beaver away behind the scenes of Mists of Pandaria, dropping hotfix after hotfix on issues affecting players.

A new batch of hotfixes was released late on Saturday night to deal mostly with quest bugs and pet battles — check out the full list of changes below.

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